While it doesn't aspire to be a consulting company, Cisco Systems Inc. does think it can show enterprises how to transform their networks to deliver new, intelligent services that can help them build their businesses and improve productivity.

In fact, sharing that networking wisdom is part of an enterprise strategy company officials here hope will fuel 10 to 15 percent growth in the coming year. Aspart of that strategy, Cisco is planning to proliferate its Intelligent Information Networks by joining with integration partners on storage, security, wireless, optical, IP telephony and home networking technologies, the officials said. Pitching itself as a trusted partner, Cisco, wants to show businesses how these hot technologies can be integrated through software- and hardware-based additions to Cisco's core switches and routers. Such integration, Cisco officials contend, will allow enterprises to do things such as scale services across large networks and free up processing cycles on servers that now have to perform that work. But at least one industry observer said such "smart networks" may not be such a smart idea. "They lack flexibility, and they are dependent on a single vendor to develop enhancements that enable new services," said David Passmore, an analyst with Burton Group, in Sterling, Va. In Cisco's flagship Catalyst 6500 switch, "we're starting to see 30 percent of [a half-million] customers mixing and matching advanced services technologies," countered Soni Jiandani, general manager of Cisco's Internet Switching unit. "It keeps customers from having to be network integrators." Cisco helped the Greater Toronto Airports Authority build one such transformational network, which went live last spring supporting a mix of voice, video and data applications. "I'm using the network to generate non-aeronautical revenue of $1 million, and this was just since April," said James Burke, vice president of IT and telecommunications for the GTAA, in Toronto. "I agree with the [growth] strategy. I like to think I've prodded them that way," Burke said.